6 ways growing up with social media has helped millennials in the workforce
Being born in 1990, I feel like I’ve grown up at the best time of the digital/socialrevolution. As a teen, I was obsessed with everything to do with social media and I was always in at the start of every new fad.
Being what we all call ‘a millennial’, I feel it is my duty to explain why those hours we spent as young teens on the computer weren’t wasted.
Get ready for some nostalgia!
1. MSN (aka Windows Live Messenger)
Of course I had to start with MSN. The founder of our social media obsession. MSN messenger was the pinnacle for school gossip, relationships and drama. It was the beginning of our fake social media persona before we really went to town with Instagram. The more colours, emoticons (the original name for emojis) and boys’ names you could fit in your ‘name’ – the cooler you were (obviously!)
But what we really learned from MSN was how to type like a ninja. I never had typing classes so I don’t type in the professional way. But I can type faster than most people over the age of 30. .
2. Piczo & Freewebs
The original CMS websites. My schoolmates loved making a website crammed with sparkly GIFs and school pictures. If you weren’t featured on one of these websites, you were an outsider (life is so cruel) – unfortunately I was one of these people. So I made my own website. And what did I learn: basic colour coding and how to make the internet work for me. Google became a trusted source of information and how to’s. My website looked pretty impressive for a 13 year old!
3. Bebo/Myspace
Step away Kim Kardashian; this is where the selfies really originated. Usually from a high angle with a waft of hair swept across the face. These platforms highlighted the different personalities and helped developed social communities.
Bebo and Myspace helped us explore our creative boundaries and take pride in our online persona. We became more aware of how public social media works and the impact it has on how people perceive us; both a good and a bad thing.
4. First Facebook
It’s amazing to see how far Facebook has come. Facebook stripped social media, as it was, right back to basics. We were fed up of personalising everything – there were far too many options! Facebook catered to the user from the very beginning and have continued to find new ways of making life easier for us.
Through this we have learned how successful you can be if you give people something they didn’t even know they needed. For example, Facebook started off with the wall. The wall was everything! But when Facebook got rid of the wall, there was social outcry. However, 10 years later, I look back at the wall and think; how did I cope with it?! Facebook taught us to keep it simple, don’t be scared to make unpopular decisions and the consumer may not know what they want.
5. LimeWire
Music pirating is BAD. Yet we loved getting our hands on free music – no matter how many viruses it would give ‘our’ computer. This is where we really learned the ins and outs of anti-virus software, and the consequences of opening up ‘your’ computer to infection. 513 viruses later, we definitely learned our lesson. I now buy my music from iTunes – I don’t even do Spotify!
6. YouTube
I was a YouTube beauty obsessive and even had a crack at being a YouTube blogger myself. I learned skills from editing videos to actually presenting in them. These skills have proven useful for quick fixes and editing videos for use in presentations. I also gained a lot of confidence through filming them and putting my personality out there for the world to see. I managed to achieve 2,000 views in 1 week on my second video. Not too bad for a rookie!
The main thing I learned, growing up with social media, was to be self-sufficient. We’re a generation that have the tools to learn pretty much whatever we want to! I feel we have responsibility to use this and give back by creating even cooler stuff than the generation before us.
